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I already fed you your lunch. Deny it all you want but by you simply side stepping the argument and by asking non sequiturs, building strawmen, or straight up dancing around the subject means you lost the argument. You're just too stupid to figure that out.

The American Left: Where everything is politics and politics is everything.

I said three are valid law, four violate freedom of religion, and the others are tripe. Do you understand?

What makes the others tripe, you are here to explain your viewpoints not vomit continual talking points.

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyesAnd clever in their own sight! Isaiah 5:20-21 NASB

I am inviting you to think for yourself my friend. We are a secular nation where people are free to worship as the choose. Only three of the laws listed are part of our rule of law and four clearly violate our freedom to worship. That is why the text, standing by itself, belongs in the trash...

The US law might be secular, but the population is not and has never been.

And just an interesting historical note: secularism in America, at least in terms of the public schools, was pushed forward NOT by atheists or secularists, but by the Catholic Church:

Archbishop John Hughes leads Catholic challenge to New York public schools

Archbishop John Hughes is born in Ireland, where he witnesses oppression of Catholics by the country's ruling Protestant minority. After emigrating to America, he is ordained in Philadelphia and then moves to New York, where parents have taken many of the city's 12,000 Catholic children out of the public school system. They see the schools as bigoted against Catholics and object to the use of the Protestant King James version of the Bible. Arguing that no religion should be favored above another, Hughes petitions the city council, demanding Catholics be given money to set up their own schools. After losing the vote, he turns to politics, urging Catholics to vote for his slate of candidates in the 1841 state elections. Nearly all of his candidates win, and in 1842 the state passes a bill ending religious instruction in public schools. Four days later, riots break out; bricks are thrown through Hughes' windows, and the doors of his house are kicked in.

Suppose I need a kidney and you are a perfect match. Does my right to life mean I have a right to one of your kidneys or does your right to control your body usurp my right to life?

In the case of you needing a kidney, do you and your spouse have the right to have a child for the express purpose of having a donor? The child may be able to contribute a kidney before it reaches the age of consent. To the

Originally Posted by PeterS

And exactly why is it you see logic unhinged from an values...do you honestly think logic cannot lead us to common values and respect?

It can, but it can also lead us away from them. That's what you miss. Why, for example, is there an inherent right to life? One logical argument is that all people are equal, therefore all people have the same right to live, and you cannot live at my expense. However, there are other schools of thought that identify specific groups of people as less deserving of life than others, such as the progressive idea of eugenics. They took Darwin's laws on evolution and argued that human history was progressing and evolving, and that it was the role of government to advance this. In order to do so, it was the function of society to advance those who would propagate desirable traits and suppress all others. Therefore, there were some people whose imperfections meant that they should be culled from the gene pool in order to advance the species as a whole. Logic can lead to individual liberty, or to slavery and mass murder, depending on the desired endstate of the person doing the thinking.

Originally Posted by PeterS

The ten commandments are historical documents for Christians and Jews and when presented as such do not belong on public ground, especially legal, though I have no objection to thier use as examples of secular law.

They are historical documents for Christians, Jews, Muslims and any peoples who have lived under legal systems created by any of those peoples.

Originally Posted by PeterS

The first four violate my freedom to worship and, infact, all but three are valid US law so for what reason should these stand alone on the steps of a courthouse...or any public square for that matter?

They only violate your freedom to worship if they are imposed as the law of the land. Note that I never said that they were to be displayed alone, but if they are, they are no more binding on you than the Roman XII Tables or the Code Napoleon. Only the Constitution of the United States, the state and municipality in which you reside and the laws derived from those documents are binding on you. You are free to work on whatever day you see fit, to worship (or not) as you see fit, and to treat your parents with whatever conempt you feel appropriate. Simply displaying the Ten Commandments does not infringe upon your rights.

Originally Posted by Arroyo_Doble

The Decalogue can be found in my Bible. The Magna Carta cannot.

I have a hard time giving a rat's ass about what some yahoo in Alabama wants to put on the courthouse lawn. I live in Texas. But to argue the Ten Commandments is not at its core religious is just asinine.

I never argued that they weren't religious, simply that they were also a historical legal document. Meanwhile, you continue to cherry-pick points from my arguments while ignoring the whole. Magna Carta doesn't appear in your Bible, but it does invoke God as the source of its authority. In that regard, it is as much an instrument of theocracy as the Ten Commandments. That also goes for the Declaration of Independence. However, the Ten Commandments are not binding on those who do not follow Christiany or Judaism, even in Christian states or the sole Jewish one. OTOH, Sharia is binding on everyone within the jurisdiction of an Islamic state, as well as those who live outside it, hence the fatwas against Salman Rushdie and others who do not live within Islamic states, but ran afoul of blasphemy laws. This is a fundamental difference between them.

In the case of you needing a kidney, do you and your spouse have the right to have a child for the express purpose of having a donor? The child may be able to contribute a kidney before it reaches the age of consent. To the

Owning a child doens't guarantee a perfect match and the question posed was that you WERE the perfect match! Does my right to life give me a right to one of your kidneys to save my life? What do our values absent logic give us? ...and ducking a question does not eauate to logic.

It can, but it can also lead us away from them. That's what you miss. Why, for example, is there an inherent right to life? One logical argument is that all people are equal, therefore all people have the same right to live, and you cannot live at my expense. However, there are other schools of thought that identify specific groups of people as less deserving of life than others, such as the progressive idea of eugenics. They took Darwin's laws on evolution and argued that human history was progressing and evolving, and that it was the role of government to advance this.

And eugenics were also logically viewed as coercive and/or restrictive and in violation of any number of natural laws...am I not correct? You are assuming that logic, if it strays, cannot correct itself. You are mistaken. This is not said for values which cannot be argued as predicated through religion can it...

They are historical documents for Christians, Jews, Muslims and any peoples who have lived under legal systems created by any of those peoples.

They only violate your freedom to worship if they are imposed as the law of the land.

Correct, which is why it was required to be removed when heald as a stand alone monumnet.

Note that I never said that they were to be displayed alone, but if they are, they are no more binding on you than the Roman XII Tables or the Code Napoleon.

This wasn't how the Supreme Court ruled.

Only the Constitution of the United States, the state and municipality in which you reside and the laws derived from those documents are binding on you. You are free to work on whatever day you see fit, to worship (or not) as you see fit, and to treat your parents with whatever conempt you feel appropriate. Simply displaying the Ten Commandments does not infringe upon your rights.

I never argued that they weren't religious, simply that they were also a historical legal document. Meanwhile, you continue to cherry-pick points from my arguments while ignoring the whole.

How so? The central argument is whether a single religious text on law belongs in ANY US court house. You can type all you like but the answer continues to be no and this was upheld by the US Supreme Court. I am not cherry picking, simply cutting to the chase of the argument...

Archbishop John Hughes leads Catholic challenge to New York public schools

Archbishop John Hughes is born in Ireland, where he witnesses oppression of Catholics by the country's ruling Protestant minority. After emigrating to America, he is ordained in Philadelphia and then moves to New York, where parents have taken many of the city's 12,000 Catholic children out of the public school system. They see the schools as bigoted against Catholics and object to the use of the Protestant King James version of the Bible. Arguing that no religion should be favored above another, Hughes petitions the city council, demanding Catholics be given money to set up their own schools. After losing the vote, he turns to politics, urging Catholics to vote for his slate of candidates in the 1841 state elections. Nearly all of his candidates win, and in 1842 the state passes a bill ending religious instruction in public schools. Four days later, riots break out; bricks are thrown through Hughes' windows, and the doors of his house are kicked in.

So if a population isn't secular we aren't secular? Only in the absense of rule of law and anarchy.